The classical Greeks, like any other ethnic group, used ethnic slurs upon their neighbors. This week we'll present some of those slurs that have come into English.

Yes, I can foresee you saying for some of these words, "That wasn't ancient Greek. It was coined by later speakers versed in the classics." Or, "That referred not to the ethnic group, but to the traits of a prominent person or mythological figure from that place. " Or, "That wasn't a slur. It was just descriptive, or the negative meaning came later." To all of which I respond, "Pooh! Let's not let quibbles stand in the way of the tale."

boeotian – a dull, obtuse person. The emphasis seems to be on rude ignorance and illiteracy (think "country bumpkin") rather than stupidity.

Boetia is a farming district in ancient Greece, whose inhabitants the urbane Athenians found thick and stupid, with no understanding of art or literature. Think "country bumpkin". Brewer gives another explanation: "The ancient Boeotians loved agricultural and pastoral pursuits, so the Athenians used to say they were dull and thick as their own atmosphere." But the slur seems unfair, since Hesiod, Pindar, and Plutarch all hailed from Boeotia.

It was called Boeotia; and in Hellenic minds the word 'Boeotian' had a quite distinctive connotation. It stood for an ethos which was rustic, stolid, unimaginative, brutal – an ethos out of harmony with the prevailing genius of the Hellenic culture.– Arnold Joseph Toynbee, A Study of History

Boeotian bliss is not conducive to invention: the hunger of imagination, the desire and pursuit of the whole, take origin from from the realization that something is missing, from awareness of incompleteness.– Anthony Storr, Solitude: A Return to the Self

This appears to be the historical equivalent of the modern American pejorative "farmer", which I recall from my childhood. According to my son it is still extant among his adolescent peers. I've always been amused by this, as the average farmer today has a broader range of knowledge and abilities than anyone typically using this insult...

You may know the humorous story which started Mark Twain on his rise to fame, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. (If not, you're in for a treat.) Many years later Twain learned, from Professor Van Dyke of Princeton, that the story was 2000 years old: it had been a fable in ancient Greece, with a Boeotian as the dupe. Twain relates how he learned of this, in his Private History of the "Jumping Frog" Story, in How to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897).

Here is the ancient version of the story:

THE ATHENIAN AND THE FROG.An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was sitting by the road-side looking at a frog. Seeing the other approach, the Boeotian said his was a remarkable frog, and asked if he would agree to start a contest of frogs, on condition that he whose frog jumped farthest should receive a large sum of money. The Athenian replied that he would if the other would fetch him a frog, for the lake was near. To this he agreed, and when he was gone the Athenian took the frog, and, opening its mouth, poured some stones into its stomach, so that it did not indeed seem larger than before, but could not jump. The Boeotian soon returned with the other frog, and the contest began. The second frog first was pinched, and jumped moderately; then they pinched the Boeotian frog. And he gathered himself for a leap, and used the utmost effort, but he could not move his body the least. So the Athenian departed with the money. When he was gone the Boeotian, wondering what was the matter with the frog, lifted him up and examined him. And being turned upside down, he opened his mouth and vomited out the stones.

Edit: Oops! Please see my post below dated Sept. 2.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz, September 02, 2004 18:51

These days we think of someone good and kind. Indeed, the Samaritans charity (I assume they exist in the USA) is one that acts as a confidante and help for badly upset people.

But Smaritans in biblical times were reviled as being bad and unhelpful people. The story worked then because of the unexpected happenstance of a representative of the reviled Samaritans putting himself out to help one whose needs had gone untended by other, supposedly "better", people.

Substitute one of today's denigated races or classes (choose your own) and the story would work better than it does in the biblical original.

sybarite – a person devoted to pleasure and luxury; a voluptuary[from Subaris (Sybaris), from the notorious luxury of its inhabitants]

[Ben] Franklin's personal habits aroused even greater ire in [John] Adams. Franklin lived the grand life of a sybarite, attended by nine servants, feasting daily frorn a table generously laden with unimaginable delicacies, in command of a wine cellar stocked with more than one thousand bottles, and borne about Paris and Passy in an elegant carriage driven by a uniformed coachman.– John Ferling, John Adams: A Life

This is a deplorable street, a luxurious couch of a street in which the afternoon lolls like a gaudy sybarite.– Ben Hecht, Michigan Avenue

Why would there be 22,000 books on, for instance, the enigma of Richard Wagner? The supposed enigma is that a man who wrote some music that is sublime (Parsifal), some that is noble and romantic (Lohengrin), and some that is wise and gently humorous (Meistersinger) should have been an active anit-Semite, the seducer of a loyal friend's wife (Cosima Von Bulow) and at various times a liar, cheat, politician, egomaniac and sybarite. Why on earth not? There is no enigma in Wagner if you remember the Anything Goes Rule. The real enigma is that experienced people who must know that traits of character and talent have complex, shifting causes, can believe or pretend to believe, that a personality must be all of a piece morally.– Richard Brown, Social Psychology

quote:But Samaritans in biblical times were reviled as being bad and unhelpful people. The story worked then because of the unexpected happenstance of a representative of the reviled Samaritans putting himself out to help one whose needs had gone untended by other, supposedly "better", people.

My understanding of the context of the Good Samaritan parable was that Samaritans were considered rivals and outsiders by Judeans rather than particularly unhelpful. Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, as opposed to the southern Kingdom of Judea, and they had their own temple that competed with the temple in Jerusalem. There was bad blood between the Judeans and Samaritans for various historical reasons, but Samaritans followed the same religious laws as the Judeans. In the parable, a priest and a Levite pass by the wounded man, ostensibly because they would become defiled had they touched him or even gone near him if he were dead. The Samaritan was bound by the same laws, but was still considered a foreigner; this is important because the parable is about how to properly follow Mosaic law. Another kind of foreigner, say Greek, wouldn't have worked because they were not bound by Mosaic law.

abderian – given to laughter; particularly, inclined to foolish or incessant merriment

But is the dictionary definition correct? The word abderian is too rarely used for me to glean its meaning from context. The sources agree that it comes from the Thracian town of Abdera, a town in Thrace, or from its prominent philosopher Democritus. [One says Abdera's "citizens were considered rustic simpletons who would laugh at anything or anyone they didn't understand".]

However, the stories about Abdera and Democritus don't really support a concept of "foolish merriment". In general they show the townsfolk as stupid or as subject fits of nutty emotion, and show Democritus as a worldly-wise man laughing at the follies of mankind, in an attitude of "Lo, what fools these mortals be."

I'll relate these various stories on our board, over the next few days. Here's one:

Richard Strauss based his last work, Des Esels Schatten ('The Donkey's Shadow'), on a 1774 satire set in ancient Abdera, Die Abderiten by Christoph Martin Wieland. The plot is a legal dispute over the question, "Who owns the donkey's shadow?" The renter of a donkey cooled himself in the donkey's shadow, whereupon the donkey's owner demands more money, claiming he leased the donkey, not its shadow. The legal dispute rages; the city and its citizens are sharply split on the controversy – and everyone forgets the donkey, who is neglected and dies of starvation.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordcrafter, August 25, 2004 08:57

Many people will know that CJ's OEDILF has been taken up by the Washington Post and the idea used in their Style Invitational contest. A few weeks back they had a "Special Extra Added Bonus Contest" to come up with a punch line to the "Oldest Joke in the World".

quote: It concerns a resident of Abdera, a town featured in ancient Greek dopey-people jokes, much as Chelm is used for Yiddish dopey-people jokes, and West Virginia is a proud component of the United States

Richard: "But Samaritans in biblical times were reviled as being bad and unhelpful people."nevau: "My understanding of the context of the Good Samaritan parable was that Samaritans were considered rivals and outsiders by Judeans rather than particularly unhelpful."

It is a key point that, regardless of the details, the Judeans had no love for the Samaritans.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" ... The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) John 4:7-9

Aren't we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed? John 8:48

Given that background, fit the parable of the Samaritan into the context in which Jesus tells it. In Luke 10:25-37, an expert in the law poses a question to Jesus:

"What is written in the Law?" [Jesus] replied. "How do you read it?" [The expert in the law] answered: "'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

[Jesus responds by telling of a man who, beaten by robbers and in distress, was ignored by both a priest and a Levite but was aided by a kindly Samaritan. Jesus continues:]

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."

The story would lose its point if "a common man" replaced "a Samaritan". It is tale against prejudice, a lesson that even one of the despised Samaritans is to be loved "as thy neighbor".

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordnerd, August 25, 2004 17:53

Incidentally, this is a good example of how the Bible can be used to demonstrate good sense and noble principles and it is my own view that all holy books should be used in this way.

Those who try to say that the Bible (or the Qoran or any other ancient writing) must be considered 100% accurate to the smallest word and must be obeyed in 100% of their exhortations misunderstand the true worth of such books.

They are the repositary of good lessons for the guidance of sensible people - not as straitjackets to bind the mindless.

solecism – 1. a word blunder: a nonstandard usage or grammatical construction2. a social blunder: a violation of etiquette; an impropriety[after Soloi, an Athenian colony in Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.]

Let us ourselves resolve not to create such social solecisms. Never go out to dinner without the means to pay for it, in the expectation that somebody else will pick up the bill.- Philip Howard, The Times, August 2, 2004

Mr Bush's idiosyncrasies are not necessarily an electoral burden. Some believe his folksy delivery and verbal solecisms play well with ordinary Americans wary of slick rhetoric and gilded vocabulary. – The Guardian, Bush's campaign trail gaffe, August 5, 2004

Your garb and manner were restricted by rule: your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder ... – Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

laconic – saying much in few words; brief, pithy and brusque, almost to the point of rudenessLakonia's chief city was Sparta, and Spartan speech was short and to the point. Examples:

Philip of Macedon raised a great army, and sent a letter to the Spartans saying, "If I go down into your country, I will level your great city to the ground." In a few days, he received his written answer. When he opened it he found only one word: . . . ."IF."

A Spartan, hearing another city phrased for its fair management of the Olympic Games, answered, 'Yes, they deserve a lot of praise if they can do justice one day in five years."

Current usage:

The great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland [Maine]. With those three names, he used up a week's quota of words for Maine people. Down at this end of the state, you occasionally can wrest a whole sentence - "Yep." "Nope." - from the legendarily laconic natives. But don't bet on it.– Denis Horgan, of Hartford (Conn.) Courant, in The Arizona Republic, August 15, 2004

My logophile friend offers these stories about "solecism" and "laconic."

Let us ourselves resolve not to create such social solecisms. Never go out to dinner without the means to pay for it, in the expectation that somebody else will pick up the bill.

When I was working my way through school as an attendant at McLean Hospital, one of the patients, an alcoholic whose father was a judge, told the story about the guy with one arm from birth injury that was two inches shorter than the other. He used the long arm to reach everything on the table that he wanted, and the short arm to miss the dinner check by two inches.

About laconic:

I still remember example of laconic speech in Latin book I had in eighth grade. When the Persians invaded Greece, in a truce before the battle, the Persian representative, trying to intimidate the Spartans, said: "When our archers shoot, the light of the sun will be blotted out!" The Spartan said: "We will fight in the shade."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh, August 28, 2004 20:17

Once known principally as a GOP hatchet man, [Bob] Dole had rehabbed himself over the years to war hero and sardonic wit. – Eleanor Clift, Newsweek, Aug. 27, 2004

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart welcomed John Kerry. "How are you holding up?" Stewart asked Kerry. "I understand that apparently you were never in Vietnam." The sardonic quip triggered laughter from both the audience and Kerry. "That's what I understand, too," Kerry replied, grinning and playing along. "But I'm trying to find out what happened."– Toronto Star, Aug. 26, 2004

A Tale of Etymology: Most sources still trace sardonic to an ancient Greek belief a plant called sardonion, native to Sardinia, caused the face to screw up and convulse in an expression resembling sardonic laughter. So said the classical Romans. (Virg. Ecl. 7.41; Pausanius)

But this Sardinia theory has been disproved. Sardonic appears in Homer (Odyssey xx. 302 σαρδάνιον), and in Homer's time the Greeks, as I understand it, had not discovered Sardinia. (Another objection, which no source mentions: Sardinia is not particularly isolated. Is it likely a supposed plant would be unknown on the mainland and identified only with the island of Sardinia?)

Some modern sources try to reconcile this, claiming that Homer's sardanion later changed in Greek, by influence of Sardonion "Sardinian" associated with the supposed Sardinian plant. This seems to me merely an attempt to preserve an old theory by explaining away contrary evidence. Perhaps this a-to-o change did occur in some Greek editions rather than later (the web is unclear), but I see no evidence that it was anything more than scrivener error or a pronunciation change over time.

My conclusion: the "Sardinia" theory is nothing but a folk etymology created by the ancient Roman writers. (PS: after concluding this, I found that Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics calls the theory a folk etymology.)

If sardonic is from Homer's σαρδάνιον, where does the latter come from? One theory cites Greek σαίρειν (in our letters, 'sairden'?) "to draw back the lips and bare the teeth", grinning like a dog. That makes particular sense when you note that the ancient Greeks did use a similar dog-term for nasty speech. Their word for "to strip off the flesh, as does a dog" (sarkos flesh), became their noun and verb for sarcastic speech (sarkasmo, sarkazein), leading in turn to our sarcasm.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordcrafter, August 29, 2004 12:20

corinthian – positive noun: a fashionable man about town; a bon vivant; esp. a wealthy amateur yachtsman or other sportsman negative noun: a debauched man devoted to the pursuit of pleasureadj: as or like such a man, of either sort (also, an ornate type of architectural column)

[miscellaneous senses: corinthian race – one in which the contesting yachts must be manned by amateurs. corinthianism – harlotry. to corinthianize – to live an idle, dissipated life.]

I be but the prince of Wales, yet I am king of courtesy; … a Corinthian, a lad of mettle, a good boy, by the Lord, so they call me, and when I am king of England, I shall command all the good lads in Eastcheap.– Henry IV, Part 1, act 2, sc. 4 (Prince Hal speaking)

The term led to the name of a popular alcoholic drink. Pierce Egan’s Life in London (1824) tells the adventures of Corinthian Tom and his sidekick Jerry Hawthorne. From this, the "Tom and Jerry".

Etymology: The ancient Greeks and Romans portray Corinth as a licentious city,¹ but this may be more slanderous than true, for Corinth was a major commercial rival of Athens, allied militarily with Athens' rival Sparta. Interestingly, though in English 'corinthian' refers to a man, the ancients viewed Corinth as a city of loose women.²

¹Note: Paul's Letter to the Corinthians refers to a different city, founded on the same site long after "Old Corinth" had been destroyed.

²Slightly difference between Greek and Roman views:. . . .To the Greeks, it seems, almost any woman from Corinth was a loose woman. Dialogue in Aristophanes Lysistrata: "'She's a Corinthian.' 'Yes, isn't she. Very open, in some ways particularly.'" Some say that "Corinth", with a verb ending, was Greek slang for "to fornicate".. . . .To the Romans, Corinth was a city of 'loose women' in the sense that it had numerous (and very expensive) prostitutes. Plutarch: "Aristophanês speaks of the unheard-of sums (amounting to £200 or more) demanded by the harlots of Corinth." Strabo: "There were no fewer than a thousand harlots in Corinth." Strabo says prostitution was part of the city's religious cult practices, but scholars doubt this, since sacred prostitution was a Middle East custom, not a Greek one.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: wordcrafter, August 30, 2004 08:50

Regarding "sardonic," there is 'risus sardonicus,' which is a symptom in tetanus. It is a facial expression characterized by raised eyebrows and grinning distortion of the face resulting from spasm of facial muscles.

This article discusses solicism in depth. "Come on, I thought," says the author. "A city known for its bad grammar? Doesn't that sound like an etymological tall tale, a fable told by English teachers to scare students into diagramming sentences?"

But the data bear it out. For example, Aristotle's "On Rhetoric" uses soloikizo to refer to an error of syntax.

The article has further discussion with the Chairman of the Classics Department at the University of Chicago. The Chairman adds that we really don't have direct evidence that the ancient Greeks thought ill of the speech and grammar of Soloi's inhabitants. Rather, this may have been merely a story created or embellished by ancient historians, engaging in amateurish etymology.

If so, it would be rather similar to what was said above about sardonic.

I'd told how Mark Twain, well after he published The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, learned that the very same story had been a fable in ancient Greece, with a Boeotian as the dupe. I cited Twain's 1897 description of that information.

Well, Twain later discovered that his 1897 information was wrong. In 1903 he reported that a bemused Professor Sidgwick had told him (Twain) that he (Sidgwick), impressed by Twain's frog story, had simply converted it to ancient Greek, apparently as an exercise for students. He never dreamed that anyone would mistake it for an authentic ancient-Greek original.

Such are scholars!

Here is Twain's 1903 account: NOTE. November, 1903. When I became convinced that the "Jumping Frog" was a Greek story two or three thousand years old, I was sincerely happy, for apparently here was a most striking and satisfactory justification of a favorite theory of mine - to wit, that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often. Still, when I later had a chance to see Professor Sidgwick's book I was a little staggered, because of two things: the details were a little too faithful to the facts in the Calaveras incident for the comfort of my theory, and I could not help being suspicious of the Greek frog because he was willing to be fed with gravel. One can't beguile the modern frog with that product. By-and-by, in England, after a few years, I learned that there hadn't been any Greek frog in the business, and no Greek story about his adventures. Professor Sidgwick had not claimed that it was a Greek tale; he had merely synopsised the Calaveras tale and transferred the incident to classic Greece; but as he did not state that it was the same old frog, the English papers reproved him for the omission. He told me this in England in 1899 or 1900, and was much troubled about that censure, for his act had been innocent, he believing that the story's origin was so well known as to render formal mention of it unnecessary. I was very sorry for the censure, but it was not I that applied it. I would not have done it. M.T.

[after Soloi, an Athenian colony in Cilicia where a dialect regarded as substandard was spoken.]

I just read a very interesting article by Nathan Bierman that does an excellent job of refuting the idea that "solecism" came from the ancient city of Soloi. Nathan went to a few experts to validate this assertion, though Jonathan Hall, Chair of the Classics Department and Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World at the University of Chicago, seems be the most adamant against this theory. Hall says that the earliest usage of "solecism" is by the 6th Century B.C. poet Anakreon, in which he beseeches Zeus, as Hall translates, "to silence the solecian speech lest you utter barbarisms."

Interestingly, one century after Anakreon, the historian Herodotus uses "soloikizo" to mean "to speak bad Scythian" -- another ancient language, spoken clear across Asia Minor in what is now Iran.

The experts just don't seem to have enough evidence to support this theory, and Hall isn't even certain that there was an official Athenian settlement in Soloi.